Novella Chapter 2 - Early OCD – Miser

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Chapter 2: Early OCD – Miser (Inner Monologue)

I wasn’t always like this.

People think I was stingy from the start, like it’s a personality defect. But I remember being the opposite. As a child, I loved spending. Buying snacks after school made me happy — even when Father scolded me. I liked giving at church, putting coins into the collection bag. I lent money to friends without a second thought. Even when they didn’t pay me back, I just shrugged.

I liked the feeling of giving. It made me feel human.

So when did it change?

It wasn’t a moment. It was a slow tightening. Like something crept into my brain and rewired it, one rule at a time.

There was that time — maybe I was thirteen — when I rode with my mother on the scooter to the market. If I came, we didn’t need to pay for parking. I just waited outside on the bike. I didn’t think much of it then. But the idea stuck: Parking can be avoided. Parking should be avoided.

And then my cousin said it — offhand, like a joke — that he spent more on parking than on gas. I didn’t laugh. I did the math. And it haunted me.

A parking fee isn’t just a parking fee. It’s waste. It’s stupidity. It’s betrayal of logic.

After that, things changed. I walked to school, even though it was far. I didn’t want to be a burden. My parents worked with sewing machines. I knew how little they earned. I was calculating, always calculating.

Later I found out they had other income. But it didn’t undo the habit. By then, the rule was already etched in me: Don’t waste. Don’t overspend. Don’t be foolish.

And the notebooks — God, the notebooks.

When I was fifteen, I bought too many at the start of the school year. They weren’t even expensive, but I felt ashamed. Wasteful. Indulgent. So I stopped buying new ones. I tore blank pages from old books, stapled scraps together, made ugly patchwork notebooks.

It wasn’t frugal. It was punishment.

Then the car. My father gave me a secondhand car to help me attend college. He was worried I’d get sick from the long commute. He meant well. But I couldn’t bring myself to use it. Every trip felt expensive. Not just gas — the cost of wear, the toll on the engine, the erosion of savings. So I stayed home. Missed classes. Lied to myself that I could study alone. That I was just independent.

I wasn’t independent.

I was trapped.

It’s not that I didn’t want to spend. It’s that I couldn’t. Every decision felt like a test. Every mistake, a sin.

People call it miserliness. But that’s not the right word. It wasn’t about greed. I wasn’t saving for something better. I was just… obeying.

Obeying rules I never wrote, but couldn’t break.

Rules that felt like safety.

But didn’t feel like living.

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